In many ways this is more of a collection of intuitive compositions than a studio album, having been written and recorded over a period of more than six years. Often, a song's music and lyrics were composed months, even years apart. The Cast merges acoustic guitar melodies and dry vocals with atmospheric synthesizers and a mixed bag of beats often creating a stylistic divergence so convulsive these songs might have been produced by separate groups if not for their thematic continuity ... These songs were constructed like a series of paintings, completed, hung for exhibition and reinvented only in the mind, cast away ... The album artwork reinforces the music and vice versa and explores sensorial correlations between music and painting and the base emotions that tie them together. The result is an evocative anatomy saturated in the artistic process. The artist is Zachary Johnson. "Even now, I dream of three … little eyes, little hands and little tears," a lyric from the song You Can't Hide Anything, is a sweet and melancholy passage in regards to the artist's children. Herein are shades of dereliction and the eventual celebration of love and poetry. This song and others, including Topless Mtn, were written while Zachary was deployed overseas in the military, and express his sense of isolation from his family. Yet, they formulate subtle tributaries with lyrics like "Though I know I'll never reach her sunny crest, a gem is deeply buried beneath her sultry breast," in reference to his wife. These graphic structures embed themselves within the musical framework of each song and reinforce the album's symbolic importance. The Cast is an uncommon and beautiful reunion of abstraction and fidelity and an honest and powerful portrait of the creative endeavor. Zachary Johnson posits a visionary array of music and imagery in his debut album The Cast. In three words this group of songs is pensive, serene and enigmatic.